JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure has spent decades following the story of the Joestars, with the story beginning by focusing on the power of the Ripple and then giving way to a focus on Stands. Though the anime franchise has seen plenty of spin-off stories emerge over the years, perhaps none were bigger than the story of Kishibe Rohan, and creator Hirohiko Araki had some major details that recently came to light about the mangaka that first premiered in the story of Morioh via Diamond Is Unbreakable.
Kishibe Rohan first arrived in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure as an antagonist, willing to do anything to help in the creation of new ideas for his manga. Harboring a Stand, Heaven’s Door, which allowed him to open peoples’ faces as if they were pages of a book, Rohan could look into the past of his targets and even give them orders that they must adhere to once his Stand activated and he wrote within their “pages”. Ultimately, he joined the side of Diamond Is Unbreakable’s protagonist, Josuke Higashikata, and nearly died while protecting the sleepy town of Morioh from the reign of terror caused by the villain Yoshikage Kira.
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Fans were able to recently discover an excerpt from a previous issue of Jump Square from 2007, in which the Joestar creator, Hirohiko Araki, broke down some behind-the-scenes facts about Kishibe Rohan:
- “His full name isn’t specifically taken from anything, but the “Rohan” part is borrowed from the novelist Koda Rohan to give it a literary feel. I think I remember choosing “Kishibe” based on someplace in my hometown, but there’s no deeper meaning behind it.”
- “His Stand name comes from a famous song by Bob Dylan.”
- “The work Rohan writes, Pink Dark Boy, is a manga that has a fantasy and reality fused within it. In other words, it’s like another Jojo within Jojo. It conceptually has nine parts, with it currently being in the fourth part.”
- “Some people think that I’m projecting myself onto Rohan’s character, considering we’re both manga artists. However, I only made him a manga artist to give the story more realism, because that’s what I know best. I’d never say any of that crazy stuff he says, by the way.”
Creator Hirohiko Araki is set to revisit a new chapter of Rohan’s life in the eleventh episode of the spin-off series.
Who is your favorite supporting character of the world of the Joestars? Let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk comics, anime, and all things JoJo.
